BlackBerry Hands Over User Data To Help Police 'Kick Ass,' Insider Says (www.cbc.ca) 144
Reader Dr Caleb writes: A specialized unit inside mobile firm BlackBerry has for years enthusiastically helped intercept user data -- including BBM messages -- to help in hundreds of police investigations in dozens of countries, a CBC News investigation reveals. For instance, citing a number of sources, CBC says that BlackBerry intercepted messages to aid investigators probing the political scandals in Brazil that are dogging suspended President Dilma Rousseff. The company also helped authenticate BBM messages in Major League Baseball's drug investigation that saw New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez suspended in 2014. One document obtained by CBC News reveals how the Waterloo, Ont.-based company handles requests for information and co-operates with foreign law enforcement and government agencies, in stark contrast with many other tech companies. "We were helping law enforcement kick ass," said one person.
All three customers will be disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
RIP BlackBerry, again.
Re:All three customers will be disappointed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, a leak like this makes me think someone WANTS to drive another nail in the coffin...
Re:All three customers will be disappointed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, a bit too convenient in light of the public reaction to the FBI/Apple fight....
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Yeah, a leak like this makes me think someone WANTS to drive another nail in the coffin...
So, you're really on the side of hiding this completely voluntary policy on the part of BB from their Customer base?
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I'm not taking any side... I'm just saying that for an insider to leak this at this time, means they're definitely trying to help kill BB. I'm just here for the popcorn and the show.
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It doesn't destroy any arguments. Apple can make concessions to the government of China in order to continue doing business there, without volunteering to make the same concessions to the American government. We're supposed to have more rights in the US than they do in China, and people at Apple think those rights are worth fighting for.
Re: All three customers will be disappointed (Score:1)
Has anyone actually confirmed that rumor? I have only seen reference to it in comments.
Re: All three customers will be disappointed (Score:1)
Apple denies it ever did. They admit China made the request but strongly deny that they turned it over.
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I don't give shit about doping in sports. If they want to use it, let them. And maffia bosses can expect to be assasinated, not my problem.
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At this point, it's more like throwing a handful of dirt on the casket.
I'm expecting the BB zombie soon enough, when Chen tries to use what's left of the patent portfolio to turn the company into a patent troll.
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I see there's still enough BB fanboys that one managed to get mod points.
How bitter and pathetic you must be now, Mr. BB Moderator. Well, at least you'll have some extra toilet paper when your shares are only worth wiping your ass with.
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I'm beginning to think that at this point either all three customers are long departed or are there to stay and can't be disappointed by anything anymore.
In before Blackberry shills (Score:5, Interesting)
For us normal humans with functioning brains, we're just waiting for when BB goes under, hoping they sell their patent for a physical keyboard to a respectable Android OEM.
Re: In before Blackberry shills (Score:2, Interesting)
BlackBerry already has gone under. All articles about them are "In Memorium".
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Which is a shame.. They had something.. They were pretty much dominating the mobile workforce solidly with all kinds of great things.. There simply wasn't any other choice at the time, maybe a Treo or something. (which, was a very meh, option but it was better than nothing).
Then, they got lazy, let Apple and Google get a leg up on how they were doing things and now BB is nothing more than a joke and an example of how to not get complacent.
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I had a Treo and Centro. Single threaded. No memory protection. You could write to a random memory location and crash the entire OS. Everything was written in C (there was a Java micro edition ... I think it was IBMs, and I could run Opera with it; which was surprisingly decent .. until the Treo crashed).
I even got a Pre. I knew several other people who had them too. Then HP bought them and that was pretty much over.
I hate how we now only have two major players.
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It is my experience that many if not most corporations (IBM used to be the exception) stop innovating once they get a certain size and the only way they do anything new is by buying smaller companies.
Re:In before Blackberry shills (Score:5, Interesting)
I call this "Novell Syndrome." Many people here might not remember that at one time Novell built the absolute best LAN server software around. But they got big heads and refused to improve. They wanted to keep LAN administration an arcane art and were killed by Microsoft. Microsoft was to area networks as Apple was to smartphones (and whether you hate Microsoft or not, their server software is now ubiquitous). People wanted certain features and Microsoft/Apple listened while [RIM|Blackberry]/Novell didn't. Now anytime I see a company die because they got too full of themselves, I call it Novell Syndrome.
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I call this "Novell Syndrome." Many people here might not remember that at one time Novell built the absolute best LAN server software around. But they got big heads and refused to improve. They wanted to keep LAN administration an arcane art and were killed by Microsoft. Microsoft was to area networks as Apple was to smartphones (and whether you hate Microsoft or not, their server software is now ubiquitous). People wanted certain features and Microsoft/Apple listened while [RIM|Blackberry]/Novell didn't. Now anytime I see a company die because they got too full of themselves, I call it Novell Syndrome.
It's not that Novell didn't improve, in fact a lot of modern AD copied a lot of the feature from Netware 4's NDS. In the late 90's/early 2000's, Netware 4's directory services were miles ahead of Active Directory in terms of both performance, functionality, reliability and scalability. It wasn't until XP that AD even became a contender, and, realistically AD didn't reach NDS's versatility until server 2008, and there are still aspects of AD that don't match the versatility NDS.
Novell's biggest problem was
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I'm too green to talk about general Novell. However. In a Mac OS X environment you want to keep as platform agnostic as you possibly can, Novell eDirectory kick Active Directory's ass. The Web GUI (iManager) let you toy with lots of the inner working of LDAP without too much fuss. It's a crying shame it didn't take it's place as a wonderful LDAP/Configuration server in general.
I paid a consultant to tailor eDirectory to my needs and it's awesome. License fees are so low. It makes my Microsoft audit people f
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Many people here might not remember that at one time Novell built the absolute best LAN server software around.
Netware 3.12? I hear you. IPX was a bitch (yes, you could do Netware on IP), but the higher layers were so much sweeter than what we had to move to.
Microsoft has 'Novell Syndrome'. (Score:2)
Look at the 'Shift in Focus' that usually comes with flailing. Novell, Palm, Be (computer internet appliances), "Microsoft Zune/Phones/Bob/We're shifting to services and making everything work like an X-Box".
The OS is now gratis. The software development at MS will soon cost more than any profits they could glean. Thus the new focus on 'Services' aka 'the cloud' and software as a service.
Gandma's computing business making Atari games is dead because the desktop computer is dead. The software service is owne
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I'm not a huge BB fan, but this really isn't news.
All major companies have done and continue to do what BB is doing as mentioned in the article, even those who refuse to write software to help unlock phones. They got praised for refusing to unlock phones but most ignored when people pointed out they gave up "cloud data" in a heartbeat.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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BB also provides tools (allbit cumbersome bes) to render their interccept/decrypt useless.
Re:In before Blackberry shills (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, there are federal laws that specifically make it illegal for another private citizen to snoop on your mail, and require a warrant for law enforcement to snoop on your mail.
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Delusional investors.
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Any genre-saavy company has this. It's nothing new. There was a name for it in the Stone Age -- you know, the BBS and newsgroup days -- the name was "Astroturfing"
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Not half the amount of windows phone shills who still claim how much everyone who has used the system loves it after each post describing declining sales.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bad plan (Score:4, Funny)
..."Those who will give up fundamental data security for a little perceived safety are morons" -Abraham Lincoln 1859...
"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet" --- Abraham Lincoln 1854
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I keep seeing stories like this that have me checking the calendar to see if it's April 1st again already....
If real, this "insider" is trying to kill Blackberry...
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BlackBerry (RIM) always had access to your information and always co-operated with the police. This isn't news. It isn't even news that they handed over the keys to the servers in countries that demanded them where they had a lot of business. BlackBerry only really kicked up a fuss when there wasn't a lot of money to be lost.
I don't really have a problem handing information over when the police have legally obtained information of suspicious activity which they take to a judge who then issues a warrant. A
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No, to work around it so they can honestly say "sorry, we can't decrypt those messages".
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If Blackberry had any hope of snatching viability from imminent collapse, this just killed it.
Goodbye, Blackberry.
And good riddance.
Thanks, Secy. Clinton! (Score:2)
Welp, there's one more country that got the emails of our BlackBerry-toting former Secretary of State. I just wish the US had a copy of them all.
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That was my first thought too. FSB or GRU impersonates a "friendly" LEA, and hey, presto!
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Don't forget to thank Secretaries Powell and Rice [theguardian.com] and also George W. Bush [wikipedia.org]. Or is it only bad when a democrat does it?
The request letter (Score:2)
.
From TFA:
...The cover letter demands police sign a confirmation that their request is legal in their home country and affirm that it is "made in connection with the enforcement, investigation, or prosecution of violations of publicly promulgated criminal laws and not the control, suppression, or punishment of peaceful expression of political or religious opinion."...
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Yes
Canadians (Score:2)
Luckily Blackberry is secure. (Score:3)
It's always been a cozy relationship (Score:3)
BlackBerry has always been willing to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in exchange for making a device secure enough that top ranking government officials can trust it. After the election, Obama famously insisted on keeping his BlackBerry, so the NSA tweaked one for him. Both backs were scratched, but once the NSA was wound deeply into the device, do you think they ever let go? Doubt it.
Maybe they can capitalize on this. Imagine this marketing campaign: "People who own BlackBerry Phones are honest and and have nothing to hide [picture of Obama with his BB.] Terrorists hide behind iPhones [picture of police at San Bernadino.] What kind of phone do you want to be seen carrying?"
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Inept? Or do they just want the control?
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We know it's on the up-and-up because they make the police sign a letter
I'm sure that's about as effective as the US Constitution has been for our own p
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Unless you are prepared to denounce all cooperation with police — in all countries — you'll need to cite concrete examples of cases, where Blackberry should not have helped the authorities in order to blame the company.
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By that logic you need to cite concrete examples in which a company's security (read: unlisted FTP server with no password) was breached to blame the company.
It doesn't work that way. Just because it's gone okay until now doesn't mean it will continue to do so. When is a control freak cop going to spy on his wife? When is a CEO's cousin in law enforcement going to check on messages from his kin's corporate opponents?
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The company claims, it takes measures to prevent abuses.
To claim their measures insufficient, you (or TFA's author) need to cite counter-examples — just as you would need to upload a "tag"-file to an unprotected FTP-server.
Most of the comments here seem to denounce Blackberry simply for cooperation with law-enforcement — as if that were automatically wrong. It is not.
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Yes. Otherwise known as "innocent until proven guilty".
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It's absolutely wrong if there is no warrant driving the specific collection of specific data from a suspect's account with Blackberry.
That pesky Fourth Amendment actually does mean something, even if people are so willing to toss it frequently into the garbage.
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This has nothing to do with the Fourth Amendment — police can ask other people about you without a warrant. It is neither illegal nor unethical for them to do so, nor is it for those people to respond — unless the investigation itself is bogus, of course.
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I don't know about Brazil, but the way we prove investigations in the US aren't bogus is to get a judge to sign a warrant, or at a minimum, a subpoena.
There may be non-bogus investigations that do not use warrants or subpoenas, but I challenge you to prove it, a daunting task when there's no paper trail, except I guess a fax from another country from a cop doing coppy things trust me I'm a cop I promise cop's honor.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, that's true.
That may be their design flaw. Or, maybe, that was one of the goals — to avoid becoming "a tool for criminals".
And before you denounce the "KKKorporations" and the "police state" over it, consider the arguments for banning of Yik Yak [nytimes.com] in colleges — by "offended" student
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The problem here is that Blackberry has deliberately built their system in such a way as they will always have access to, and subsequently the ability to divulge, your secrets.
Really? Wasn't there BES (enterprise server) which was secure, and didn't use BB's own infrastructure?
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This has nothing to do with the Fourth Amendment — police can ask other people about you without a warrant. It is neither illegal nor unethical for them to do so, nor is it for those people to respond — unless the investigation itself is bogus, of course.
Asking to obtain data that could reasonably be categorized within the bucket of "papers or effects", such as phone call data, messaging data, e-mail data, etc. I would generally consider to be skirting the Fourth Amendment.
Further, the Fourth Amendment was written and put in place specifically because of abuse of "writs of assistance", very similar to the purpose of National Security Letters and also similar to what "asking" corporations such as Blackberry to hand over data today is like.
From Wikipedia: "In
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They probably aren't legally wrong. I'm sure someplace in the 142 page terms of use it says that they can release the data. However, in the course of an investigation, if police want to get into a safe, they don't contact the manufacturer to get them to open it. They apply for, from a judge, a subpoena to have the person of interest open the safe. If they refuse, then that judge can imprison the person for contempt. The safe manufacturer has no legal requirement to respond to such a request. They no l
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Of course, they are just fine legally. I contend, there is nothing automatically wrong ethically either.
Unless one is prepared to denounce all cooperation with police — and in all countries — one needs to cite particular examples, where Blackberry was wrong to cooperate, in order to accuse the company of ethical lapse(s).
You are obviously right, it is not. But the manufacturer may choose to cooperate.
I gave an example
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So let me ask you this, who are the criminals in Brazil? Who are the righteous people who sho
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The flaw in your example is that the pizza delivery guy witnessed the crime. Blackberry in these cases, did not witness, then report. They are simply being asked to blow the doors off the safe that may contain some information of interest. Even that isn't necessarily a problem. Law enforcement might want to contact the safe company and ask for their assistance to make sure the doors are blown off without damaging the contents, and the safe company engineers might be the best people to help achieve that.
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Please... You are grasping for straws. I gave a second example — of the delivery guy wearing a wire to help police. He does not have to have personally witnessed the crime, he just has to be sincerely believe, there is one in progress.
Now, of course, having personally witnessed something helps develop such sincere belief, but it is neither required nor sufficient. For e
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Due process, fucker.
I have no interest in doing business with a company that will just give up all my data to anybody with a badge. Judicial oversight (and court orders) exist to protect us from corrupt cops. Blackberry bares it all without any checks at all.
Fuck them.
Puts a different spin on this article (Score:2)
https://slashdot.org/story/16/... [slashdot.org]
Maybe people are leaving because of the cooperation violating privacy concerns?
which police? (Score:1)
The police Eric Snowden was working with?
The strangle unarmed black people police?
The NEA political police?
The EPA police who wanted to start crucifying people?
The police who illegally distributed Joe the Plumber's tax problems to the press?
The NASA muslim outreach police?
Was it the police who watched over ambassador Chris Stevens?
The La Rasa police who want to return the Southwest to Mexico who are going after Trump University?
Not sure I want those police kicking a
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Exactly.
I always enjoy how these "if you have have done nothing wrong..." folks don't volunteer their own private information and communications to become part of public record.
They'll give data to any government person... (Score:2)
To Help Police 'Kick Ass,' (Score:1)
Wait (Score:2)
ALL the user data? (Score:2)
Given their market share that means they had to burn it onto a CD.
Mostly because nobody has 3.5" floppy drives anymore.
Business/government. Get it? (Score:1)
Why all this hatred is focussed on Blackberry? (Score:2)
I'm not sure why all this is on Blackberry when they are just following what a lawful court ordered. After all even with Apple strenuously resisting in the San Bernadino terrorist case the FBI still hacked into the phone with private help. Shouldn't the vitriol be focused on the government that ordered this infringement of liberties? After all Snowden's leaks have illustrated that no one is safe if the government wants to get into your phone and your business.